Umami: Fast, Privacy-focused Web Analytics for All

This interview is part of our OSS Spotlight series where we showcase founders of fast-growing open-source projects that are solving really unique problems and experiencing strong community adoption.

Sudip Chakrabarti spoke to Mike Cao, creator of the open-source project Umami that is a simple, fast, and privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics, bringing the power of web analytics to all.

Mike shared with us his motivation behind creating Umami and how he is keeping up with all the fast growth of the project.

Tell us about yourself. What did you do before, what made you start Umami?

Mike: I went to college at UC Davis and my first job was at a startup called CampusEngine.com where we built and hosted websites for college campuses. Soon enough the dotcom crash happened and the company folded, leaving me to bounce around a couple of different full-time and consulting gigs in software development. Eventually, I landed at Adobe where I worked in digital marketing until I started Umami. Throughout my career, I have always worked on side projects. I felt that that was my way to learn new technologies and to solve problems I was facing myself. Umami was no exception. In late 2020, I was tracking web analytics for a couple of my personal websites and I started using Google Analytics for that. Google Analytics was free, but I found it to be complicated to use because I was not a marketer myself and it was a tool built for marketers who were looking for lots of capabilities and features. Additionally, I didn’t like the slow and complicated user experience. So, I decided to build a faster, simpler and friendlier version of Google Analytics for my own use. I built the first version in about a month and open sourced it right away.

Tell us some of the history of the project. What were the early days like, what made you decide to open source the project and eventually start a company?

Mike: The decision to open source Umami was a no-brainer. I consider myself a fierce open-source advocate. I have learned so much from the open-source ecosystem that I am always looking for opportunities to give back to the community. In fact, I have open sourced every side project that I have ever created; so, Umami wasn’t going to be any different.

Once I open sourced Umami, it was picked up right away by Hacker News, Reddit, etc. and very quickly a lot of people started using it and started requesting bug fixes and features. This was very different from my past experiences with my other side projects where I never saw this kind of enthusiastic reception right out of the gate. Very soon, I was spending all my free time being a developer, a product manager and a customer support agent for Umami, and it started to take up all of my free time. Seeing all that interest in Umami convinced me that there was a large market opportunity here. But, I also realized that I needed to have a different mindset if I were to build a business vs. just maintaining a project. So, I decided to jump all in and start a company.

“I needed to have a different mindset if I were to build a business vs. just maintaining a project”

What problem are you addressing with Umami? Why would someone use it, especially when there is a free alternative?

Mike: Umami is a simpler, easier, friendlier version of Google Analytics built for an average user who cares deeply about privacy. It allows users to understand where their website visitors are coming from, when they visit, how much time they are spending on the website, etc. We take all that data and package it in an easily consumable form. And, we do that without using cookies, tracking users, or collecting any personal information and therefore respecting the users’ privacy. Google Analytics is free, but most people, unless they are seasoned marketers, do not need all the features it offers at the expense of ease of use. And of course, Google asks a lot when it comes to privacy.

Tell us a bit about the progress so far. What metrics do you track and why? Why do those metrics matter to the project?

Mike: We certainly track the usual community metrics like GitHub stars (we are at >12,500 stars), number of contributors (>150) and downloads (several millions). As you might expect, we also “dogfood” Umami to track our own web analytics. But, we find that metrics are still not enough when it comes to building deep relationships with the community. We spend a lot of time actually speaking to community members to understand what features they need, how the project is being used, how they are finding us, etc. To date, we haven’t spent a single penny on marketing; so, understanding where our organic growth is coming from is super important to us.

So, any specific tips on how you engage with your open source community?

Mike: I have got two. First, make sure you understand the makeup of your open source community so that you can use the right channel to engage your different constituents. For example, our community is almost equally divided between technical and non-technical users. Early on, we realized that we could not use the same communication channel to get both groups’ attention. So, we started using GitHub Issues for our technical users and Discord for our less technical members to seek feedback on our product roadmap, security features, privacy issues, etc. This also helped us to promptly respond to issues and feature requests from the community. I cannot overstate the importance of being responsive to your community. Communities very quickly notice if a project isn’t being worked on actively and they move on at the first signs of staleness.

“Make sure you understand the makeup of your open source community so that you can use the right channel to engage your different constituents”

The other thing that I would highly recommend is to make the onboarding process as user friendly as one possibly can. Open sourcing a project is not enough if people cannot use the project easily on their own. Hence, we have built a lot of guides and tutorials to help our users with onboarding, even answering plenty of basic questions. I strongly believe that without an easy self-hosting experience, the overall user experience and community adoption of an open-source project suffers greatly - that is something we pay a lot of attention to at Umami.

By making it so easy to self-host and use Umami, are you not cannibalizing the commercialization potential of the project?

Mike: Absolutely not. For Umami to succeed, the key is to become ubiquitous and get as much mindshare as possible. And, that is only possible if we could provide a great user experience starting with onboarding. Once you become the “standard” in your space, there are usually multiple different ways to monetize as a business. For example, enterprises increasingly care about privacy and GDPR requirements. An enterprise offering could include hosting Umami in certain geographies on a specific cloud infrastructure and applying enterprise-specific policies to secure data. I could see enterprises paying for that.

What have you learnt since launching the project that you wish you knew when you had started? What would be one thing you would have done differently knowing what you know now?

Mike: I would have built out the team sooner and focused on building faster. For far too long, I treated Umami as a side project. Given how passionate I was about the problem and how the project took off from day one, I should’ve flipped the switch on going full time sooner. I see far too many open source founders making a similar mistake and sitting on the fence even when their hearts and minds are telling them to jump all in.

What advice would you have for someone who is thinking of starting a new open-source project?

Just do it! Success or failure, there are only benefits down the road for anyone starting an open-source project. As I had shared earlier, several of my earlier open-source projects did not take off, but I learnt so much - new languages, new frameworks, new use cases - and met so many interesting people along the way. So, my only advice would be to not sit on the sidelines, but just do it.

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